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Reading Plans for 2016 | The Sunday Salon

Sunday, January 17, 2016

I've been writing and thinking about this post for a while. At times, I was sure that I should not make any reading plans, but at other times, I craved some structure or plan to guide my reading. Initially, I started off with a bunch of goals, then later I stripped out a lot of it to focus on only what I really want to do this year. Obviously, going through half of January and not really reading much has helped put these goals in perspective. So rather than get lost in a sea of goals, I figured I could split them into stuff I definitely should do and stuff I would like to do.

{Do} Start each month with a book from my shelf. Almost 28% of books I read last year were from my own shelves. That to me, is a win. I'm hoping to stay more or less around that same number or do better.

{Want} Read a book from India each month. I have been very bad about reading books set in India. I do decent on trying to read diversely but not many of those books are from India. I only say I "wish" for this because even if I do this every other month or only every quarter, I'm happy.

{Do} Read a (preferably horror) book by Stephen King for Halloween. This should probably be a {Want} but I'm leaving it as a {Do} because I've been saying this for three years now. To me, Fall/Winter is the wrong time to read horror and my reasons are why it IS the right season to read horror. In October (at least in the Northern hemisphere), the nights are longer, the evenings can be depressing, even the mornings are darker so reading a horror book or watching a horror movie can easily give me nightmares. Yeah, I can be a chicken sometimes. But I'm buckling up for the ride this year.

{Want} I would like to focus heavily on 2015 releases during January - March. I have been mostly backlist-reading over the last year and so ended the year with a big list of 2015 books I want to read. Of course, I will read anything that catches my fancy but if I'm shopping for my next read, I will probably try to pick a 2015 book.

{Do} One chapter / middle grade / YA book a month. One thing I want to do for Shreya is build her a library of diverse books. I grew up reading mostly American books (despite not growing up in the US) and as a child, whenever I wrote a story, I tended to favor white heroines. I wish I had read more Asian books growing up but even when I went book-shopping last month in India, I found these books to be hard to find. That was depressing so rather than scurry around for a book when Shreya is ready for reading bigger books, I would like to start finding those books now. (Yeah, I am trying not to plan Shreya's entire life already. :-) )

{Want} I am going to try and stay away from review books as much as possible this year, unless I can start reading that book right away. This is usually somewhat difficult - who doesn't like new and shiny books? But I hate not being able to guarantee a read + review within weeks of getting a book.

I like how I thought about this. I probably won't feel too bad about not getting to the Wants, and the Dos are simple enough to do - in fact, they are something I am already doing (except #3, of course) so I won't be changing my reading styles or aiming for the moon when there is no shuttle to get me there.